


Art

by qwanderer



Series: Pardicer [6]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Ace!Parker, Episode: s05e04 The French Connection Job, F/M, Multi, Nate is creepy and manipulative, POV Parker, aka I stole like four scenes' worth of dialogue for this from, but in you know the nicest possible way, clearly this is another job for the tag, let's go steal a FREAKING ENTIRE EPISODE, parker is just blunt about it a lot, this is one of those fics where I basically rewrite the whole canon without changing the canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-13 21:24:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9142882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwanderer/pseuds/qwanderer
Summary: Right now she itches with the need to steal something, itches with the instinct that there's something valuable waiting just outside her reach, just beyond glass, glass just waiting to be smashed.And she is tired of waiting.





	

**Author's Note:**

> so I pretty much stole all the material I needed from The French Connection Job for this. You don't have to watch the episode to get the fic, all the important bits are here.

So the thing about being Parker is that you spend a lot of time waiting to feel things, and a lot of the time, if it doesn't happen, you just stop. 

There's nothing wrong with being Parker. Hardison's told her that a thousand times, and Eliot's said it a few, in his own way, which is as different from the way Hardison says it as Eliot himself is from Hardison. 

Hardison says, _You're different. You're special. You're beautiful. You're not like anyone else. I am in awe of you every day._

Eliot says, _You and I, we don't always react the way a normal person would. That makes us useful. It also makes us scary. An' that's something we just have to deal with._

They never try to make her feel something she's not ready to feel, or tell her how she should feel. But she's getting better at recognizing the patterns in feelings, and predict how other people will react, and make them do things she wants them to do. It's part of grifting, and it's part of planning. 

The problem is that the mark she wants to manipulate now is herself. 

Parker wants to get herself to fall in love with Eliot. 

* * *

She asks Hardison for help first. 

"Girl, you don't... you don't _make_ yourself fall in love with someone. It just happens, or it doesn't. And if it doesn't, that's totally fine, okay? You love him the way you love him. He gets plenty of all the other kinds of lovin' he needs from me. He wouldn't... he doesn't want you to change. Not for him. He loves you because of who you are _now._ 'Kay?" 

She frowns. "What if it's not for him?" she asks. 

"Don't do it on my account, either," Hardison says. "I've got no problem being the person in charge of having heart eyes over Eliot. Not like it's a hardship." 

"No. For me. I want to feel that." 

"If you aren't already in love with Eliot," he asks, "how do you know if it's something you want?" 

* * *

That's a good question. 

The thing about being Parker is, you spend a lot of time having feelings but not feeling them, so that they sneak up on you suddenly when you're not looking. 

She hadn't known to wait to feel things about Hardison. It had just... burst, like something delicate crushed between her fingers, the glass that had separated her from the terrible, alive, scrambling creature that is what she feels when she watches him try to reach people, try to love people. 

But right now she itches with the need to steal something, itches with the instinct that there's something valuable waiting just outside her reach, just beyond glass, glass just waiting to be smashed. 

And she is tired of waiting. 

* * *

She asks Sophie for help next. 

"I think I might be in love but I can't feel it properly," she says. "What do I do?" 

"Is this about Hardison," Sophie asks, slow and gentle as always, "or is it about Eliot?" 

"Eliot," Parker says without hesitation. "I've figured out my Alec stuff. Mostly." 

"Well, I think a good place to start would be to figure out what you _are_ feeling about Eliot," Sophie offers. "For example, I assume you're attracted to him? That can be confusing in all sorts of ways. Sometimes it's part of passion, and sometimes it's not." 

"No," Parker says. "I mean, if you mean in a sex way. I'm not attracted to anyone." 

"Oh," Sophie says. Parker can tell she's surprised, and trying not to show it. Parker knows that she and Nate have a lot of sex. Parker knows that things are different between the two of them, when they are and when they aren't. 

What does Parker feel when she looks at Eliot? 

"He's my friend. And I don't want him to hurt." 

"Parker," Sophie says softly, "darling, I don't know what to tell you. I'm at a little of a loss." 

"That's okay," Parker tells her cheerfully. "You helped. I'll figure it out." 

* * *

Parker knows the difference between the way that Alec looks at her when he's about to tell her that she's amazing and how he looks at her when he's jerking off. 

Parker knows the difference between the way Eliot looks at Hardison when Hardison is being kind and the way Eliot looks at Hardison right before he tries to eat Hardison alive with kisses. 

Parker knows the difference between the way she feels when Alec's humming her a lullabye as she drifts to sleep, and the way it feels to have his hand in hers when they're about to jump off of something high. 

The second one is a rush, a high. A good feeling you chase. It doesn't last. It isn't as important. 

All of Parker's feelings like the first one just happen to her. Whether she's waiting to feel them or not, they just do, or they don't. 

She wants to feel something important on purpose. 

She wants to be in love with Eliot. 

Sophie calls it passion. The important stuff that goes with dating. That can go with sex. 

Eliot has passion for a lot of things: for food, for music, for Hardison, for kids, for people getting a second chance and things being set right. 

Even though he is like her, and sometimes feels nothing when a regular person would feel everything. 

* * *

Next, she asks Nate. 

"Why is Eliot so..." She screeches like a pterodactyl, with accompanying illustrative hand motions. "...about food?" 

"It's his passion." It's as simple as that for Nate, and he understands so much. Because he always pokes around in people's heads. This is why she usually doesn't ask him things about important things. "You okay?" 

"Uh huh." She doesn't try very hard to lie, because Nate always knows anyway. He pokes and he prods. "Everything is fine," she replies, lying badly. 

"Parker, what's going on?" 

Maybe her head needs some poking around in. Someone to barge in and rearrange the furniture. 

"I just... I don't have a thing." She has a person, she has people, but if she's going to learn about passion, maybe she needs to start from a different angle. "Eliot has a thing. He loves food. Sophie loves theater. You have a sicko love of controlling people." 

"I don't have a sicko love... let's stay on you. Art. What do you - what do you see when you look at Michaelangelo's _David_?" 

"Mark two laser grid around it, infrared on the floor, need a harness rated for six tons attached to a chopper to lift it out through the skylight." _The rush. The exciting feelings. The things I chase._

Nate frowns. Then he pushes it aside, because it's not getting him anything. She's not giving away any tells he doesn't already know. 

She's not giving him the little twitching animal that's in her chest, or the other one that she suspects is somewhere waiting to join it. She watches him go, and is just as much at a loss about the things that Sophie feels as Sophie is about the things Parker feels. 

* * *

Finally, she asks Eliot. 

Eliot is finally flying. "I'm gonna turn this place from a microbrewery into a gastropub. What d'you think about that?" 

Finally, is what she thinks. This is why they bought the place. This was what Eliot had seen when he'd first looked at the place. 

But it's not just about what makes you feel like you're flying, and Parker knows that better now. The rush can be part of passion, but it's not _all_ of passion. 

It's coming together now because Eliot is teaching. He's working with kids. He's helping give second chances, helping to set things right, and he can do it all with his food, this time, instead of his fists. 

"Teach me to like stuff," she says. 

His eyes are wide, almost hopeful for a moment, before he goes back to his usual frown. "Parker, I don't have time for this, all right? I gotta get this stuff done, then I gotta get back to the school." 

She stays quiet. 

He looks up from his eggs, and the look in his eyes is the kind of look that comes from a small animal trying to crawl its way out of your chest. 

He loves her. There's something there that's heavy and important. 

She thinks if she could _touch_ that, then she'd find part of herself that's lost. Part of herself that feels off-balance, and she doesn't like feeling off-balance. If what she feels when she looks at Alec is her right hand, then she thinks she might have a left hand, but she's not sure, because it's asleep. 

She knows it's going to hurt at first, like it did with Hardison, like pins and needles all over, shocking and distressing. But she still wants it so badly. 

Eliot makes a plate. He makes it for her, and sets it in front of her. 

She looks at it. 

"It's just food," she says. Food is a thrill, like theft. Stealing the sugary cereal from the highest shelf, stealing a bite from a donut, stealing a chocolate bar from the corner store and feeling the thrill of victory fizzing in time with the sugar high. Food is just what keeps her flying. 

"It's not just food, all right?" Eliot says, frowning again. "Some people could look at it and see just food, but not me. I see art. When I'm in the kitchen, I'm - I'm creating something out of nothing. You know what I mean? And sometimes I crush it, sometimes it's crap. But either way, it makes me feel something." 

"Feel what?" 

"Just... feel." 

"Feel. Okay." She doesn't understand. It isn't the sugar that she understands the meaning of, the orange soda that keeps Hardison flying when he needs to be on top of the world. It's something more... substantial. 

She keeps looking at the plate. She can't understand. She's still waiting. It feels like it always comes back to waiting. 

"You know, I didn't feel anything for a long time, and Toby taught me how to cook, and after he did, I started to feel stuff again. That's why I share it through my food. This is my art. This is my art, Parker. It's like letting a stranger in your head, just for a second. And you allow them to feel what you're feeling." 

That nervous little animal escapes Eliot's chest and is looking out at her through his eyes as he speaks. 

"Look again." 

* * *

The job needs a food critic. Sophie has a name already in this con. 

"Parker can do it," Eliot says over the comms. 

"No, I can't! I don't even like food! Except for chocolate and donuts." 

"Listen to me, Parker, you can do it, all right? Remember everything that we talked about. Nate, she can do it." 

"Yeah, okay," Nate says as if he doesn't believe it but is curious to see her fall. 

Sophie preps by telling her that aside from the food, this is going to be pretty much like Memphis. Parker is allowed to be strange, because she is the distraction, and the team has set her up to be someone too important to dismiss. Sophie tries to coach her through the food stuff. 

It isn't working. 

"There isn't anything she likes or can connect with," Nate comments. 

Sophie takes a breath. "Parker, this time when you take a bite, think of the first time you stole something." 

Parker does. She knows she's smiling too wide, but... that was a good memory. Sweeter than the strange pink toast she's eating. 

Now they need to go in the other direction, to compensate. Just as she's taking her next bite, Sophie says, "think of... jazz." 

Parker gags. 

Smooth jazz sounds like, _feels_ like it's trying to pull her brain out through her face. Sophie knows this. Just, for the record, reminding her of that when she's eating? It's not nice. It makes her feel that sort of barfy way she does around eleven in the morning on the first day of her period if her rappelling doesn't go smoothly and she comes to a sudden and unexpected stop. 

But the job moves on, talking code to Hardison is distracting at least, and the spring rolls are... pretty okay. 

Eliot asks how the food is. 

"I just feel like... I should be feeling more," she tells him. 

He instantly changes the whole dish around, insistent on making it better. She helped. Eliot let her help. She helped by saying how she was feeling. And that's the edge of something. 

The next thing they bring her.... 

"I can taste garlic, and mushrooms, and something else that makes me feel different." 

"Wait, was that for me?" Hardison asks. "'Cause I - I don't get it." 

"No, it's the food!" Parker says, and it's a rush, but it's not like stealing, it's... bigger than that. "I get it. I feel something!" 

She feels more and more as she eats, like the creature inside her is suddenly a hungry little animal. She has to tell them. She has to tell Eliot how she feels. How the food that he made for her makes her feel. 

She doesn't have the words, but she _tries._

And maybe there is no second little animal, after all. Maybe this fluttering creature is her heart. Maybe it can leap at knowing Eliot, too. 

Is this art? Reaching out so far to another person that she touches her own heart? 

She doesn't need art, to reach Hardison. 

Pretzels are free, waiting at the bar for anyone to take. This is what has, and always will, confound Parker about pretzels. They don't have to be stolen, or earned. They are free, and there are always more of them. 

Alec Hardison's heart will always shine out through his eyes, and he will always love, he loves so quickly and so freely. He can help anyone find out anything that matters. Of course he helped her find her heart first. 

But this? This is Eliot's food. This takes work. This had to be earned. Eliot is tricky. His heart doesn't open up and show itself to just anyone. 

And the little animal that is her heart has come out to meet his, to see him. She can feel it. She's learned to reach out. 

Parker is proud to have earned this. Parker is proud to have done the work. Parker is proud. She has created love. 

* * *

(She still doesn't want to have sex. With either of them. 

That's okay. She stopped waiting for that feeling long ago. She supposes she's just built that way. Right and left hands accounted for, heart in place, no sign of a dick.) 

* * *

She'll never see art as _just_ something to steal, not anymore. She'll always be looking for the little signs of those creatures looking out through the eyes of a painting, of people's hearts reaching out to whisper their secrets to hers. 


End file.
